The Coyotes and Polleros (people smugglers) have a new scam to import illegal immigrants into the US, Passport Rental.

Apparently they steal passports and then rent them to people that resemble the original passport owner, once in the US the renter has to return the passport, so that it can be rented to others. According to the Excelsior newspaper, from Mexico, the fee for passport rental is of about $470.

This is good business with minimal risk for the Coyotes, because they don’t have to physically bring the people through the border and risk getting caught.

I have to hand it to them, they are smart and resourceful. If those guys used their intelligence and smarts for good, they could be millionaires and could actually do something good.

People tell me that English is the international language and that they don’t need to learn another language. I specially hear that the US is the big superpower and that others should learn English…This is just a little tiny bit arrogant, do you think?

Granted that English is a global language and that has been at the head of globalization. But that is changing, the new face of globalization has people speaking several languages, do we want to be left behind?

I decided to learn French next, so people at work ask me why do I want to learn more languages. To me learning another language is more that just learning grammar, learning another language opens new windows in my mind. When you learn another language you learn about a different culture, how they communicate, how they think, and why do they do things the way they do. It helps you get in the mind set of other people, what if we all spoke more than one language, and were able to understand instead of fear the other one? That would be tremendous. Language communicates thoughts, a way of life and gives us a new way to experience the world.

Why learn another language:

Communication, it helps you communicate with people all over the word as well as in your home town. I was so excited when I was learning Italian and started chatting on the net with Italians, that was awesome.

Develop an understanding of another culture and its people.

It might help you improve the knowledge of your own language.

It would give you a global perspective, the world would no longer be limited.

It is empowering

it is also good for you mind, to keep your faculties and to improve your brain activities.

There was a group of indigenous (Native American) people from the Amazon’s rain forest “found” by Brazilian officials.

This is worrisome to me, I hope that no one tries to contact them. I know that Brazilian and Venezuelan law have protected territories for them, but those laws are not fully enforced, specially if there is mining or logging to be done.

When the issue of Illegal immigration comes up I always read and hear people say, ‘if they just came here legaly’. I also hear people assume that anybody that migrates here automatically becomes an American Citizen. Most people don’t know the process that people have to go through to come to the US, of course they never had to go through it. Here are some of the requirements to come here.

First you have to have a reason for coming to the US and based on that there might be a visa that applies to you.

You have to be coming to join immediate relatives (parents, children, spouses or siblings), to be a student, to do a job, to start a company, to invest money; you have to have a reason that is much more concrete than simply “because I want to.”

Depending on your basis for immigrating, you will either be applying to come temporarily, on a temporary visa, or permanently, with the intention of applying for a green card, and perhaps eventually, citizenship.

Review all the visa, humanitarian and parole types below. If you do not qualify for any of these, your only choices are illegal immigration Read the rest of this entry »

WATERLOO, Iowa — In temporary courtrooms at a fairgrounds here, 260 illegal immigrants were sentenced this week to five months in prison for working at a meatpacking plant with false documents. Two others received lesser sentences, while another eight were convicted of a separate crime.

The prosecutions, which ended Friday, signal a sharp escalation in the Bush administration’s crackdown on illegal workers, with prosecutors bringing tough federal criminal charges against most of the immigrants arrested in a May 12 raid. Until now, unauthorized workers have generally been detained by immigration officials for civil violations and rapidly deported.

The convicted immigrants were among 389 workers detained at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant in nearby Postville in a raid that federal officials called the largest criminal enforcement operation ever carried out by immigration authorities at a workplace.

“To my knowledge, the magnitude of these indictments is completely unprecedented,” said Juliet Stumpf, an immigration law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., who was formerly a senior civil rights lawyer at the Justice Department. “It’s the reliance on criminal process here as part of an immigration enforcement action that takes this out of the ordinary, a startling intensification of the criminalization of immigration law.”